Lioness
by Margravine
Summary: A lion cannot be tamed or housebroken. He can survive, but not live caged, he needs to roam the plains and highlands restlessly, searching for his prey. Midnight listens to the lion’s roar. Who better to understand that than a Gryffindor?


She will not ask him to stay.

When she wakes, when the still grey dawn creeps through her window and into her soul, she knows he will be gone.

Not physically, not yet. He still stands in her bedchamber, a room that, for all their years of acquaintance, he had never been granted admittance to. Now of course, what is hers is his, and vice versa.. but all she wants, now, her only hope, dream and desire is for him to stay.

He gazes out past the sunrise, to the barely visible ruin of his childhood, and his mind is already far from her. She slips out of the bed and pads silently toward him. He does not turn from the window but wraps a long arm around her. Neither speaks, knowing the weight of words will fracture the precious serenity of this moment, so long in the making. If she had been less stubborn – if he had only –

Regrets are useless. Moments of peace are few and far between in the war that is raging. Their paths, merged for one brief moment have diverged already. Perhaps these stolen moments came too soon, after too long, will never be enough, must sustain her for the rest of her days. Leagues of distance will separate them by nightfall. . . .then perhaps the greatest divide of all.

As if sensing her morbid train of thought, he stirs at last and meets her glistening gaze. He kisses her hungrily, as he has wanted to for years, and she clings to him desperately, a shadow of her former self, hoping against all logic that if she holds him tight enough, she can prevent the world from crumbling around her.

But it is over already, time has run out, and as they whisper desperate, ragged endearments, she does not – cannot – say the words that will bind him to her.

She longs to, more than anything she has desired in her life. They hover, half formed, on her swollen lips, begging to burst free, to be released. They may save his life. . . but they will break his future.

She wants to keep him from the front. He is hers, and no one else's.

He would stay for her, if no one else. She is the only one, has always been the only one with any power to restrain him. But can she wield it at the price of their love? If she keeps him, she knows she will soon have nothing to keep. His regard would trickle through her fingers; their love would sour with the taint of unspoken resentment.

She still barely believes that she, of all people, wears his ring or that he bears hers. It has been only hours, and the cold weight of metal is unfamiliar. She did not believe in love, at least not for her. He did not believe in anything. And yet they had, at last, almost too late, found each other. And now that she had in her grasp the most impossible of dreams, a searing happiness she had never even imagined, they had, instead of long years unfolding in rosy glory, hours.. minutes.. seconds left to them.

For all her talent and power; despite being the most formidable witch of her generation, it is he that is summoned, not her. There is no place for a woman on the battlefield, they say. For all that, she would have gone, disguised herself as a man and smuggled herself to Germany, but she has pressing duties elsewhere. Here. He does not ask her to stay, he knows that she will never abandon her charge, as he knows she will not ask the same.

He will go, and she will continue her search. One sister is still missing, the other in desperate need of care. She has her work to do, and he has his. Yet as his lips meet her neck, as they curve into the ghost of a smile, she wants to lash out.

She has been strong all her life. She has carried on, even when the world stopped turning and the stars went out. How much more will be demanded of her? Why did fighting for the Light demand such a price?

Does it end?

Will Grindelwald's death release her?

It must. The darkness that has blighted the world cannot be allowed to spread any further. It must never be allowed to rise again. They will each, in their way, fight for this.

He will go, he will do his part, not for a muggle king, a magic minister, or even for a country he loves. He will go because of the deep seated nobility he denies, for the quiet compassion he tries to conceal. He will go because he loves her. He will go because he can do no less.

He will go. She will remain.

The man who will return – and he must return – he will return from the battlefield, but he will not be the lover of her youth. He will be wearied by the ugliness of war, desecrated by the filth of killing, but he will be back, and he will be hers. He will return. He must. She will not even consider -

She locks her arms around his neck and breathes in the musky scent of him, knowing that despite herself, she is trying to contain an impression of him, to hold in her heart forever.. He hold her just as tightly, and she knows he is doing the same, that he will take with him to the blood and gore of war the image of a dark haired woman with frowning features and sea green eyes.

He will go. She will remain.

The war has battered, but not destroyed them yet; their purity of their hearts dulled from its gleaming flame, but not put out. The fire of passion still burns within them, a need to right wrongs and fight for freedom, for love, for glory. For safety. For days to grow old, hand in hand, for nights spent under the stars, for the promise of years of each other, for the peeping possibility of golden haired, green eyed tots scrambling about this old, forgotten house in a far off future. A world without dark lords, and mudbloods, only all magical kind united by their dreams and uncaring of blood. How ironic, that blood must be spilled to bring their vision about.

He will go, this very day, and she will not stop him. She will remain.

A lion cannot be tamed or housebroken. He can survive, but not live caged, he needs to roam the plains and highlands restlessly, searching for his prey. Midnight listens to the lion's roar.

Who better to understand that than a Gryffindor?

**Thoughts? Fear not Cadmin shippers, this is (currently) AU to the Ripples series.. but that may change.******

**Reviews are love, as always. No seriously, I can see how many hits vs reviews I'm getting……******

**Also : Jo (Rowling, not me) owns Min, and Byron owns "Midnight listens to the lion's roar"**


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